About

﻿ Aim of the Flora

Our goal is to provide New Zealand with a dynamic, continually updated, electronically-based Flora. It will be based on new systematic research and will bring together information from our network of databases and online resources. Users will have easy access to the most authoritative, accurate, and up to date information on New Zealand plants.

Further information

Why do we need a new Flora?

The Flora of New Zealand series on indigenous and naturalised vascular plants was first published in 1961, with subsequent volumes in 1970, 1980, 1988 and 2000. Since these volumes were published there have been major advances in taxonomic research on the New Zealand flora, including description of new taxa, revised generic circumscriptions, and new information on biostatus and distribution. This means there is a constant need to revise the Flora of New Zealand volumes to keep them up-to-date.

The electronic Flora of New Zealand is an opportunity to provide contemporary taxonomic information for the entire New Zealand flora. It will eventually integrate information about native and naturalised, vascular and non-vascular, and marine and terrestrial plants.

Why is an electronic Flora the best approach?

Flora users need immediate access to data that is up to date, and presented in a format that meets their requirements. Traditional approaches suffer from long delays in publishing, and are difficult to update with new research results and information. Underlying data is unavailable for other uses, as only the summarised data embodied in descriptions are presented. Data is frequently not linked to herbarium specimens.

An electronic flora gives the flexibility to adjust effort and focuses work on priority groups, enables delivery of parts immediately on completion, and integrates data from various research projects. It gives the opportunity to present information in a variety of formats and tools, e.g., interactive keys, to suit the diverse needs of Flora users.

What plant groups does the Flora cover?

The electronic Flora of New Zealand covers the New Zealand botanical region and includes flowering plants, gymnosperms, ferns, and bryophytes. It includes naturalised as well as indigenous plants.

What information does the new Flora include?

The electronic Flora of New Zealand includes information drawn from the Flora of New Zealand five volume series on vascular plants, published descriptions from scientific publications, and new taxonomic treatments. New taxonomic treatments prepared for the electronic Flora supercede those from the five volume Flora of New Zealand series.

Authorship of Taxon pages:

The author of each page is indicated at the top right of the page. This can be used to distinguish when a taxon has been fully treated or only contains "automatic" content. Taxon pages that state the author as “Flora Committee” are automated pages and have not been treated in full. They will contain a limited amount of content such as nomenclature and hyperlinks. Other taxon pages (i.e., those that do not have the author “Flora Committee”) have been full treated by the stated author, and should contain descriptions, recognition notes and other fields, in addition to the automatic content.

All material on the Flora of New Zealand website is protected by copyright. Ownership of copyright is indicated for specific items or collections of content. Where no alternative copyright ownership statement is shown, copyright is owned by Landcare Research New Zealand Limited (Landcare Research).

Licence

Unless indicated otherwise for specific items or collections of content, this copyright material is licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence. In essence, you are free to copy, distribute and adapt the material, as long as you attribute the work to the copyright holder and abide by the other licence terms.

Some images are published on this site in accordance with separate agreements with the copyright holder (e.g. using CC+ protocol). Copies of these agreements can be found here.

Logos

The licence granted does not apply to any logos, emblems and trade marks on the website or to the website's design elements. Those specific items, including but not limited to the eFlora logo, may not be re-used without express permission of Landcare Research.